Welcome to Barrie

And now for the big unveiling:

This is our new house. Can you see the potential? We think we can. That's why we bought it. But it came with an unkept lawn/bushes, and two trailer loads of garbage! (thanks to the former owners).

It was an interesting day. But we'll save the details for later... Right now, we'll just show you some of the "Before" pictures. Maybe in a few months we'll be updating with some "After" pictures.

Entrance

The Kitchen

The Living Room (see if you can zoom in for the tacky wallpaper)

The Master Bedroom (Martin - you're coming to Ontario soon, right? 'cause we need a painter!)

The Blue Bedroom (zoom in for the teddybears!)

The White Bedroom

Upstairs Bathroom

The Deck

Half of the Backyard (the other half features a Rabbit Pen)

The First Thing We Did (Clean Up the Place!)

Now you've been given the quick tour....if you want to see more (or the improvements, some of which will be quick in coming) then you'll have to come out and visit!

The Grass

Well... Steph and I are three days away from the closing day for our house. We've managed to get all our finances together (... surprisingly, with a little kaching left to spare in our bank account!). Now we're just worried about the condition that the former owners will leave it in.
We do get to do a final walk-through before we close (in case we need to hold back any kaching for repairs or disposal of trash on closing) but who really wants to go through all that?
We're hoping to be able to just walk in, do a little cleaning and settle.
But Steph did a 'drive-by' earlier this week and it seems that they haven't cut the grass. Possibly for weeks. Maybe months. Oy.
Is it fairly normal for people to leave a mess behind? Or is anyone still considerate enough to clean up before they leave?
We'll find out! ... on Monday

Our New House!! (Just Kidding)

The past two weeks, I've been 'enjoying' a 'visit' to a 'cottage' in 'Owen Sound'. I say 'enjoying' because we were there working - and didn't really have time to enjoy much of it. There was no t.v., not much food, the 9.8 horse power Mercury engine kept sputtering out and dying when we were in the middle of the lake, and not once did I get time to sleep in that hammock you see on the left side of the 'cottage'.

It wasn't much of a 'visit' as the complications of this deck forced us to be there for 2 weeks which is more of a temporary home than a visit. Actually, I think I was there for longer than I've been at Steph's parents (where we're staying until we can move into our new house).

This 'cottage' has a total of 7 separate sleeping areas, some of which have more than one bed. So you could probably fit our entire Geertsema clan into the 'cottage' fairly comfortably.

What you see is one of the largest decks I've ever built. It features Winchester Grey Trex deck boards with a hidden fastner system, ProBuilt Aluminum Railing (with tempered glass inserts), and a giant 8 person hot tub (8 feet by 11 feet). Total cost of materials - not including the hot tub - was somewhere around $16,000. If you use the rule of thumb (cost of materials X 2 = total cost of deck including labour) this deck costs around $32,000, except that my boss typically charges much more than the going rate... And this was not a typical deck.

The only thing that will keep the cost of this deck down is the fact that we were building it for my boss's boss. (I work for By Design Construction and we get ALL our work from Cedar Springs Landscaping)(the boss of Cedar Springs Landscaping owns this cottage and rents it out...)

I'm proud of this deck.

I'd show you more pictures, but uploading this picture took a full half hour on the ol' country internet connection.

The only thing I'm more proud of is the fact that every night but the first night, I beat my boss at foosball.

School's Out!

Horray!!! School is done for another year and I survived! Yesterday was the last day and graduation. It was craziness all day, cleaning and trying to control kids who are flying higher than kites. I was definitely exhausted by the end! So it was a little sad since it was my last day at JDCS, but now we're onto new things which will be fun for us. We get our house in just over a week--oh my! And Dave has been working in Owen Sound for the last two weeks, so that's not been so fun. Anyways, I'm done for two months which feels great!

It's Official!

Alright, now that it's all official we can share the news: We are first-time homeowners!!! We bought a house in Barrie! That's right, no more renting for us! We found a nice house, about the size of Steve and Katrina's townhouse (for those who were there), but it's detached, which is really nice! It's a corner lot, so we have a great sized yard! The house needs a bit of work eventually (cosmetic...there's a lot of tacky wallpaper and it needs new carpet and some landscaping). But we'll be able to do it ourselves and it doesn't have to be done right away, which is nice. The closing date is June 30 which is much faster than we anticipated, but we'll work with it! The bonus was that since they wanted such an fast closing date they were quite willing to negotiate on the price.....we're pretty sure we got a pretty good deal, especially considering Barrie is a quite expensive market! So that has been keeping us really busy the last week! We've been driving all over, going to appointments, spending hours on the phone coordinating everything and trying to work at the same time! It's been really crazy! Anyways, we're quite excited and thought that it was finally time to share our news!

Craziness

Our life lately can be summed up in that one word!

Since attending the AOYC we have packed up our apartment, moved into my parent's house, been to Barrie to look at houses. We've been back and forth a few times, which feels like a longer drive every time! And we're still working. Dave's been working long hours and trying to build a deck on the side. I have two weeks left! Hooray!! And then I have to start getting ready for my new position. And we're still working on finding Dave something for next year.

Anyways, there's a short update for us! We hope everyone else is doing well!

The Trials and Joys of Working with Youth

Earlier today we returned from the All Ontario Youth Convention. In the beginning and through the months leading up to this week-end we have to admit that we really weren't looking forward to it. To us it was just another committment we had as Youth Leaders, therefore we had to do it and after it was done, so were we. Leading Youth Group has been a tough and challenging haul for us this year. The kids didn't seem to care or appreciate what we were doing and it was always a fight to get them to respect us and participate. And to be honest, in the last month or so we've kinda given up on that fight. It was taking too much out of us on top of all the other stuff we're working on right now. All year we wished that the kids would relate to us on a different level, other than calling us "Mr and Mrs Geertsema." Well after this weekend we've finally reached that desired level of interaction with some of our kids. Going to a weekend retreat like this where their focus is on God and drawing closer to him as well as the others around them, and spending more time with us, has opened them up to the fact that we're people too. We're not just bossy people who make them do Bible studies every other Sunday night. So we were really excited about this, we spent the weekend talking with them and supporting them through life-changing, and not-so-life-changing, decisions. They were finally talking to us. The only sad part for us was the fact that we're done youth group for the year and won't be back next year to build on these relationships.

Anyways, the Convention was great! I'd never been to one before and it was a really good experience. The speaker was amazing and the band was great (Article One, look them up!). They also had a drama group that was awesome called One Time Blind, definitely worth looking into if you're doing youth group and are looking for some new material. Their skits are based on some really foundational questions which students need to think about in order to grow in their faith. So all in all, despite the cold, rainy weather, the serious lack of sleep and hurt ankles (Dave playing soccer), a great weekend was had by all! And for anyone that's interested their holding the first annual Ontario Young Adults Conference this August, it'll be a good one too!